H Khan at pak def said---[QUOT]
Some days old news: PAF Air Vice Marshall Sohail Aman, Deputy Chief of Air Staff (Operations) is in the US. Yesterday he visited Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. He'll be traveling to LM plant at DFW, also
PAF is planning to acquire 17 more Jordanian F-16s and 14 from another source.
PAF and China now in negotiation to co-develop/produce FC-20 at PAC. FC-20 is third version of original J-10A. Chengdu has already told PLAAF that in its present facilities it can't manage the orders that PLAAF has placed. Few factors have stalled FC-20 are financial, WS-10 has not developed into a performance based engine, if the present engine is used then the both China and Pakistan have to conduct negotiations with Russia.
There are three different versions of J-10. J-10A (present production), J-10B (Testing phase) and FC-20.
Since there are production capacity issues with J-10, PLAN has received only enough aircrafts for one regiment and it is pushing to get more J-10 at faster rate which is not possible. PLAN has started to look at FC-1/JF-17 to fill the gap for its needs. If this goes through the order for FC-1/JF-17 would be close to 300 aircrafts.
China has too many aircraft projects on its plate. Suggesting that PAC and Shenyang should jointly work on J-20 project rather then proceeding with Chengdu FC-20 project. Just a little prudent thought, which is free!
PLAAn has already taken delivery of J-10A fulfilling aircrafts for one regiment, however, they are in need of more J-10A. But the Chengdu plant which produces J-10A has huge backlog of orders for PLAAF and has it made clear that they can't take more orders with the production, hence, they are in need to fulfill their requirement. They are looking towards FC-1/JF-17 to fill the gap and the total number of aircraft they require is close to 300.
I didn't mean that PLAAN are in need of FC-20[/QUOT]